科学家长久以来在寻找人类大脑的解剖学差异，以解释男性和女性的认知差异，特别是在控制空间感觉和语言的皮质区域。
此前的研究已经揭示出了两性之间的神经元密度和神经细胞的其他小特征的差异，但是这些性别差异都和行为或功能没有联系。在一份新的报告中，Lidia Alonso-Nanclares及其同事利用癫痫患者脑手术切除的新鲜大脑组织解释了男性和女性的神经回路的差异。这组作者利用电子显微镜研究了这些组织，发现在涉及社会和情绪过程和其他技能的颞叶新皮层中，女性的突触密度比男性低。这组科学家提出人们对男性和女性在突触（两个神经元的连结点，它让精确调节的细胞对细胞的通讯成为可能）水平上的解剖学差异的关注很少。这组作者说未来还需要进行研究从而理解这些差异如何影响脑功能。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
PNAS published September 8, 2008, doi:10.1073/pnas.0803652105
Gender differences in human cortical synaptic density
L. Alonso-Nanclares, J. Gonzalez-Soriano, J. R. Rodriguez, and J. DeFelipe
Certain cognitive functions differ in men and women, although the anatomical and functional substrates underlying these differences remain unknown. Because neocortical activity is directly related with higher brain function, numerous studies have focused on the cerebral cortex when searching for possible structural correlates of cognitive gender differences. However, there are no studies on possible gender differences at the synaptic level. In the present work we have used stereological and correlative light and electron microscopy to show that men have a significantly higher synaptic density than women in all cortical layers of the temporal neocortex. These differences may represent a microanatomical substrate contributing to the functional gender differences in brain activity.
